The Mask Is Coming Off: MAGA Is Learning to Love the Kremlin
- john raymond
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
There’s a shift happening. You can feel it in the silence where pushback used to live. For years, any claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset would trigger an immediate, almost Pavlovian reaction from his defenders. They'd sneer “conspiracy theory,” invoke the Steele dossier as a strawman, or cry “Russiagate hoax.” They’d say “no collusion,” and rest their case on repetition and volume.
But now? Something different is taking shape.
On platforms like Reddit, particularly in the fever swamps of the far right, the reflexive denial is fading. And in its place is something more dangerous: acceptance. Not just acknowledgment, but normalization. A pivot is underway—not to deny that Trump is working for the Kremlin, but to suggest that it doesn’t matter. Or worse: that it’s a good thing.
This is the moment the gambit has truly paid off. Because for all the deception and misinformation, the most important sleight of hand Trump ever pulled was not just to keep his assethood hidden—but to render it irrelevant once revealed. This was always the plan. The May 9th Gambit, the trade softening with China, the diplomatic theater around Ukraine—all of it aimed to slowly pull back the mask without causing panic. And now, the final phase begins: the recalibration of moral terms.
The MAGA faithful are being trained—quietly, systematically—to see Trump’s relationship with Russia not as treachery, but as strength. To see Putin not as an enemy of democracy, but as a misunderstood ally. To view Ukraine’s suffering as the cost of “realism.” To believe that maybe, just maybe, the liberal democratic order was the problem all along.
This pivot is not accidental. It is engineered.
And here’s the bad news: it’s working.
People are being asked to forget what they knew. They are being nudged to reinterpret years of instinct—instinct that told them that being a pawn of a hostile power was bad. They are being encouraged to ask themselves if it was really so wrong for Trump to do Putin’s bidding. “Didn’t we want peace?” “Isn’t NATO expensive?” “Is Ukraine even our business?” “Maybe Putin’s not so bad…”
That, right there, is the goal. That is the surrender. Not of land, not of money, but of truth.
But here’s the good news.
For that surrender to be possible, the truth must first be admitted. The wall of denial is breaking. The reflexive defenses are gone. Even MAGA is tacitly accepting what many of us have long known: Trump is a Russian asset. And with that admission comes the possibility of clarity—for those willing to face it.
Now is the time to say, Yes, it’s true. And yes, it matters. Trump didn't lie for eight years about his loyalties because it didn’t matter. He didn’t silence whistleblowers, undermine investigators, and gaslight the public because it didn’t matter. He lied because he knew—we all knew—that being a servant of Putin is a bad thing.
Putin is not a misunderstood partner. He is an autocrat waging an illegal war. He is a tyrant silencing journalists, assassinating dissidents, abducting Ukrainian children, and tearing down democratic institutions wherever he can reach. The Kremlin is not a misunderstood regime—it is an engine of oppression, oligarchy, and death. And Donald Trump, willingly or not, has carried water for it for years.
So no, the revelation of Trump’s assethood is not a neutral fact to be shrugged at. It is the most important truth of our political generation. And while his base may learn to rationalize it, while pundits and centrists may find ways to downplay it, we must not.
Because now comes the fight for the meaning of the truth. The truth is out. The question is what we will do with it.
Let no one forget: Trump hid it because it is wrong.
Let no one excuse it: Putin is evil for what he is doing in Ukraine and beyond.
Let no one normalize it: A president who serves a foreign dictator is not a statesman. He is a traitor.
This is the line. It is not rhetorical. It is moral.
The mask is off. Now it is time to look at what was underneath—and refuse to look away.
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